The present invention relates to the field of medical devices, more particularly to the field of contact isolation and infectious disease warning systems.
More than 90,000 Americans get life-threatening, invasive infections annually from the drug-resistant Staphylococcus “superbug”, Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), often in an institutional setting such as a hospital; these infections reach the bloodstream or destroy flesh and turn deadly. MRSA-related hospitalizations have increased by as much as 119% over three years according to some reports. Death rates average 1,000 per month. Clostridium difficile (C. diff) which is a highly contagious bacterium causing diarrhea, colitis, toxic megacolon, and colonic perforations can also be spread in hospital settings via fecal contamination of objects and surfaces. Death rates from this have been increasing dramatically in recent years as well. The fact that these and other organisms have mutated to become highly resistant to antibiotics makes them difficult to eradicate and thus a major initiative has been placed on preventing their spread. The mainstay of prevention is hygiene and contact isolation.
Other infectious agents are transmitted via airborne or droplet vectors and specific strategies are utilized to prevent their spread. At times, the hospital must arrange protective isolation for immuno-compromised patients.
Hospital patient rooms are generally open to visitors, medical and paramedical staff, and hospital employees, but when medically compromised patients occupy a hospital room, special precautions, following certain protocols which depend on the patient condition, must be taken to prevent transmitting disease to the patient or from the patient.
Warning visitors and staff of the precautions which must be taken regarding an individual patient under isolation has been a problem for hospitals. Due to the fact that hospitals are very busy places with many types of passive signs and other devices used for many purposes, it is not a rare occurrence for handwritten or even printed signs to be ignored or accidentally overlooked. Furthermore, placement of the sign can be ambiguous if the doors or entryways are adjacent with little space between them
A better, more active, yet inexpensive, solution to this problem is needed and it is an object of the present invention to provide a device and a corresponding method to address this problem.